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Roundup: Homeless Dumping Settlement

Surveillance cameras on the Union Rescue Mission were instrumental in the City Attorney's case against College Hospital.

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — On Wednesday, the City Attorney's office announced a settlement in its case against College Hospital, which it charged with dumping more than 150 mentally ill individuals on Skid Row over the last two years. The hospital will pay $1.6 million and is forbidden from releasing patients into the area.

Here's a roundup of media coverage of the press conference and settlement.

Union Rescue Mission

Los Angeles Times

Doctors at College Hospital diagnosed Steven Davis as suffering from schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and schizoaffective disorder. Doctors at the Costa Mesa mental institution prescribed him numerous drugs to deal with paranoid delusions that had led to an earlier suicide attempt.

But that didn't stop the hospital from hauling Davis into a van and driving him more than 40 miles north to downtown L.A., where they dropped him off outside the Union Rescue Mission. When mission officials complained to the hospital, the van returned and drove Davis a few miles south to another shelter. Davis wandered away without ever entering.

[Stephen] Davis' experience prompted a yearlong investigation by the city attorney's office, which culminated Wednesday in a court order that should deter hospitals from tossing others like him onto the streets. Just as important, the order could help hospitals manage the challenges that homeless patients with mental illnesses present.

CBS' 60 Minutes

The first rule in medicine is: do no harm. But doing harm is precisely what some Los Angeles hospitals are being accused of when it comes to patients who happen to be homeless.

As CNN's Anderson Cooper reports, the claim is that hospitals don’t like dealing with homeless patients, who are often uninsured and sometimes unpleasant to treat. So they literally dump them on the streets of Skid Row, even if the patients come from other places in Los Angeles, and are in no condition to fend for themselves.

KPCC

L.A. City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo says College Hospital Costa Mesa may have dumped as many as 150 psychiatric patients on Skid Row in the last couple of years. His office has reached a settlement with the hospital. KPCC's Brian Watt reports.

Wall Street Journal Health Blog

The question now is what to do with these patients. As we noted last year when the city passed an ordinance barring homeless dumping, one complaint from hospitals was that some patients simply refuse to leave. Several hospitals did admit their own failings and were revising their discharge procedures, however.